AESOP is highly recommended and head and shoulders above most thrillers featuring operatives facing high-level threats and physical and mental challenges. It will especially delight thriller audiences who like their action nonstop and their characters not just intelligent, but self-determined, driven, and sometimes edgy in their relationships with loved ones, superiors, peers, and the world. Baker's personal quest is to keep America safe. With unwavering loyalty, Baker was trained to assist government and outside agencies in identifying, locating, and eliminating individuals and nations that pose as threats to the United States. Baker navigates through assignments, that on surface, appear to have no connection. Ultimately, Baker finds out that they are all intertwined. She'd sacrifice all to protect her country and those she loves. But can she foil a terrorist plot before her foes bring about global destruction? With the wave of deadly threats escalating, she fears her loved ones will never be safe until she eliminates every traitor. But as her concern grows about the depth of corruption, she senses even one loose end will destroy her family... and the United States. Can she lock and load before everything gets fubared? A balls-to-the-wall explosive debut novel. If you love Reacher, Rapp, Harvath and Bosch...you'll relish Baker in this action-packed espionage thriller with deep conspiracies and sharp jolts of humor. Matti is a feisty commando woman whose own mother was killed in the course of an undercover mission, leaving her beloved daughter to be raised by others. She follows in her birth mother's footsteps in working on foreign missions, facing terrorists, torturers, and adversaries and cultivating relationships with strong peers who also operate under the radar, but she's also managed to shield her husband and children from her demanding career as a secret operative.
What could possibly go wrong in her latest mission? Plenty; because it not only involves dangerous confrontations overseas, but comes full circle to attack her personal life and everything she loves.
The central force in AESOP lies in Matti's personality and spunky perspective take the world, and in her take-charge attitude and training which not only allow her to survive, but to consistently confront the forces against her. It's refreshing to see a female protagonist take the reins with independent thinking, proactive engagement, and confrontations that demand higher-level thinking.
Matti is a formidable spy, enemy, operative, and individual whose dual identity as a wife and mother is constantly tested by her assignments.
From chance encounters and the nature of 'defining moments' that change her course in life to her creative problem-solving skills and determination to not just survive, but thrive, Matti's character is the driving force to a story of espionage, intrigue, and adventure that will capture reader interest and keep readers engaged right up to a vigorous, explosive conclusion.
Plenty of thrillers attempt to create spunky female protagonists; but AESOP excels in its gritty, first-person observational style. It will especially delight thriller audiences who like their action nonstop and their characters not just intelligent, but self-determined, driven, and sometimes edgy in their relationships with loved ones, superiors, peers, and the world.
AESOP is highly recommended and is head and shoulders above most thrillers featuring female operatives facing high-level threats and physical and mental challenges.
- D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review, November 2018
AESOP by Michele Packard is a fast-paced novel that introduces private contractor (Hit Lady) Matti Baker whose job is to find and eliminate individuals who pose a threat to America. Packard has created a kickass heroine that possesses beauty, brains, cunning, guts and brawn. In this novel, Matti is out to stop some very bad actors, and the job is exasperating. She doesn't know it, but someone is out for her too. She has or knows something of importance that someone powerful wants very badly. So sometimes she is the hunter, and at other times she is the hunted.
She uses her beauty and charm to eliminate one bad man but sometimes the hunted are immune to her charm, and things have to become a bit more violent...She is part Bionic Woman and as cunning as Pussy Galore; she is the female version of Mitch Rapp.
-Texas Authors, December 2018 I've written a few non-fiction pieces, but this was the first time to write in this genre. I never imagined writing a fictional thriller-killer, but who doesn't love a female Jason Bourne with humor?! michelepackard.com